“The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be.” WritingHardStoriesAgeRememberUsedFoundMemoriesFictionStepsMaterialsTalesUsed To BeElusiveIntricateWriting Fiction Author:Marina Warner
“I used to retain information extremely fast, so perhaps it's hardening a bit and I don't take the impression as well as I used to. Instead of writing in free flight, I had to check on the stories all the time. So I have decided I better to do it while I am fresh!” WritingWellsStoriesUsedBitsInformationDecidedImpressionChecksFlight Author:Marina Warner
“Although the stories are very present in my book, and very present in my mind, what I was most interested in was the question of why it had attracted such a following in the 18th Century. It's less mysterious that it attracted a following in the Romantic period, and in the 19th Century, but the early 18th Century when the Rationalists fell in love with it...that was mysterious. What I wanted to look at was the forms of enchantment.” MindLooksBookStoriesWantedFormCenturyPeriodsFollowingMysterious19th CenturyEnchantment18th Century Author:Marina Warner
“I think that a true economics thinker or a Marxist thinker would make nonsense of my argument, although I have given massive seminars and no one has demolished it so far. I did think that this idea from an artisanal and trading perception of the auratic quality of goods when they are given character and inscription, made the stories of phantasmic wealth read more powerfully in the 18th and 19th centuries than the stories of Cinderella's wealth, because they are conjured out of nothing by these magic means.” ThinkingMeanMadeIdeasCharacterStoriesGivenWealthQualityMagicCenturyPerceptionEconomicsArgumentNonsenseMassiveGoodsThinkerTrading19th CenturyMarxistInscriptionsSeminars Author:Marina Warner
“Our traditional stories are based on an aristocratic model without a middle class, whereas The Arabian Nights reflect people living in cities, traders, merchants, travelers, with a wide range of personalities.” PeopleStoriesNightCitiesClassMiddlePersonalityModelsWideTraditionalRangeMiddle ClassTravelerMerchantsTradersArabianAristocraticLiving In The CityArabian Nights Author:Marina Warner
“The Grimm brothers always said that their informants were women, which is possibly not true, women of the people. There is the constant evocation of women's voices, in the collecting and arrangement of these stories, and yet the message of so many of them is incredibly misogynist. I was very puzzled by that, and that book explores that contradiction.” PeopleSaidBookStoriesVoiceBrotherMessagesConstantContradictionArrangementsCollectingPuzzledGrimmInformantsBrothers GrimmTrue Woman Author:Marina Warner
“Scheherazade, of course, was always in the back of my mind, because she's also a storyteller identified as female who tells a lot of anti-female stories. There's a parade in The Arabian Nights of sorceresses, adulteresses, ghouls, sirens, harridans.” MindStoriesNightCoursesFemaleStorytellerParadesOf My MindGhoulsSirensArabianSorceressArabian Nights Author:Marina Warner
“There are a range of women not represented in the Western fairy tale tradition. Husband-beaters are particularly interesting, as well as male pederasts. Children are often told in The Arabian Nights, "This man likes to abduct boys, be careful of him." These issues are explored through the medium of the stories, but actually the architecture of the book is such that there are many examples of women who are loyal, brave, devoted - especially to their lovers.” MenWellsChildrenBookStoriesNightInterestingBoysIssuesExampleLoversHusbandTraditionBraveWesternMalesCarefulArchitectureLikesTalesMediumsRangeFairyBe CarefulFairy TaleLoyalDevotedArabianArabian Nights Author:Marina Warner
“The model of the educational Kalila Wa-Dimna. These are books of instruction to rulers and humans. The stories unfold a range of human psychology, a vast range of human psychology. The Sultan is being moved from his narrow and bigoted position into a wider, more subtle, more nuanced understanding of human experiences.” HumansBookStoriesUnderstandingPsychologyPositionModelsMovedEducationalRangeSubtleInstructionRulersHuman Experience Author:Marina Warner
“There is humanist enterprise of the book, and amongst that there are many, many stories. And that is why at the end, when he says that the stories are so illuminating that they must be engraved and encased in gold and put in the palace library, the people who compile the book are telling us that this is a collection of human wisdom.” PeopleHumansBookEndsStoriesGoldLibraryCollectionsEnterpriseHumanistPalacesIlluminatingEngravedHuman Wisdom Author:Marina Warner
“An interesting example is that the worst woman in the book, who is so cruel and violent, is the sorceress in "The Prince of the Black Islands." She's a beautiful young woman, and she has turned her husband into stone from the waist down. A traveling sultan finds him, in his dreadful state, and the man petrified from the waist down tells his sad story...how his wife comes every afternoon and beats him until the blood runs down. She's just unwontedly, arbitrarily cruel.” MenBookStatesStoriesRunningBeautifulYoungBlackInterestingWifeBloodWorstExampleHe ManHusbandBeatsStonesViolentIslandsAfternoonYoung WomenSad StorySorceress Author:Marina Warner
“The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise.” PeopleThinkingChildrenCharacterStoriesUsedNightLiteratureRacismNegativeWestAppealsRacistDisguiseStereotypeMagicianNurseryChildren's LiteratureArabianParenthesesArabian Nights Author:Marina Warner
“Love can make you turn on yourself, and it can do harmful things to you. It's a deep lesson in human psychology, as with many of the stories. Anyways, that's just an example of one of the most wicked women in the Nights.” HumansStoriesNightTurnsCan DoPsychologyExampleLessonsWickedTurn-on Author:Marina Warner
“The stories are most often about justice. In her stories, those who commit injustice, or act tyrannically, come to no good. They are punished.” StoriesJusticeInjusticeCommit Author:Marina Warner
“There is a theory, that I rather subscribe to. The frame story implies that if he doesn't change, she will kill him. It's all very complex and subtle. The story is about a woman who persuades a man in power to a different temper and attitude, and so it is about women's wiles, what women will get up to. She has a plan, she has a scheme.” IfsMenDifferentStoriesAttitudePlansTheoryComplexesGet UpSubtleTemperSchemes Author:Marina Warner
“I don't think that there's a target audience at all. These stories were in circulation. The stories were told by men, told in the marketplace by men, but also behind doors by women, but there's no real record of this. It's likely they were told by women to children in their interior rooms. The story could be a negative story, they could be presented as a, "Watch out! Women will get round you, do things to you, weave you in their toils." It could be buried in it an old cautionary story about women and their wiles.” ThinkingMenChildrenRealStoriesRoomsBehindsWatchesAudienceRecordsDoorsNegativeRoundsTargetBuriedToilInteriorsMarketplaceCirculationTarget Audience Author:Marina Warner
“One of the metaphors of the book is the carpet. Not just the flying carpet, but the carpet as a woven surface in which many repetitions and motifs recur and mirror one another. This is very much reflected within the stories: they have borders within borders, repeated motifs which change. They have their feet in oral conventions, and for the mnemonics, the storyteller needs to have a structure in order to remember the stories.” NeedsBookStoriesRememberOrderFeetMirrorsStructureMetaphorSurfaceFlyingBordersConventionsRepetitionStorytellerCarpetWovenMotifs Author:Marina Warner
“I see the carpet reflecting that narratological structure of the storytelling, with Scheherazade as the outside frame story on the outside, with the stories woven on the inside. It's also demonstrative of the infinity of it, with no beginning and no end. The carpet is also a kind of metonym for cinema, this idea that the flat surface carries a terrific depth of imaginative field while remaining totally flat.” KindIdeasEndsStoriesFieldsStructureDepthSurfaceStorytellingCinemaCarrieFlatsInfinityImaginativeCarpetTerrificReflectingWoven Author:Marina Warner
“One of the things I try to do is try to make repetitions, rhymes, and mirrorings across the subject matter of my own books so that the chapter titles and the epigraphs and pictures all kind of form a tapestry. In this book, I retell fifteen of the stories. You have the critical frame, and then you have these rosettes like the motif in a carpet.” TryingKindBookMatterStoriesFormMy OwnSubjectsCriticalAll KindsTitlesChaptersFifteenRhymeRepetitionCarpetSubject MatterTapestryMirroringMotifsEpigraphs Author:Marina Warner
“The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due.” ThinkingCharacterStoriesHappensLyingFoundWaitingWonderCreativeDoorsPromiseOffersBlueCuriosityCaughtDuesStoresThings HappenTalesFairyFacultyFairy TaleStorytellerChamberWishful ThinkingEnchantmentMetamorphosisMake Things Happen Author:Marina Warner
